Security assets such as stocks, derivatives, bonds, and debentures have long been used by the public as investment instruments. A security may represent debt, equity, or may be derivative from other assets. A security may be represented by a tangible certificate, or electronically by data records. Investors may acquire or trade securities in primary or second markets. Various security exchanges allow investors to buy and sell securities. One or more online platforms may be provided by the security exchanges or one or more brokers of securities. Investors may access the online platforms through a browser, a mobile application, or other suitable software. The online platform may display information about securities (e.g., pricing information), provide analysis tools, receive orders from the investors, and communicate with other systems to cause the orders to be executed.
To date, although security assets are widely held among the public, they have not been used as instruments for making everyday payments and are generally not accepted by merchants (e.g., retailers), as compared to other asset types (e.g., fiat currency or cryptocurrency). Several factors prevent the use of security assets as payment instruments. First, the transfer of security is generally associated with longer transaction times than a simple transfer of fiat currency. As the value of security assets may fluctuate with respect to the fiat currency, accepting security assets may add to the risk for merchants. Second, exchanges and brokers often do not allow the purchase or transaction of security assets in fractions of their base units. As security assets can often be expensive (e.g., thousands of dollars), it may impossible to transfer the exact value of a payment using units of security assets. Third, a transfer of security assets may involve substantial transaction costs that are likely to be imposed on merchants or customers.